Rachel Esner studied at Columbia University, City University of New York and the Universität Hamburg, Germany. She received her Ph.D. in 1994. The title of her dissertation was Art Knows no Fatherland: The Reception of German Art in France, 1878-1900. Working as a freelance art historian, she published a number of articles over the years, participated in international symposia, and in 2000-2001 was a fellow at the Centre allemande d’histoire de l’art in Paris. In 2003 she was invited to join the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Amsterdam, Department of Art History, where she is currently Assistant Professor and member of the Institute for Culture and History (ICG). From May 2008 to September 2009 Dr. Esner was also Assistant Professor and Program Chair of the Master's in Photographic Studies, Leiden University.
She is a specialist in German and French art of the late nineteenth century and in art criticism, with a particular interest in the interaction of art and politics;the history of reception; the formation of the image of the artist in modernism and in art historical practice; feminist and Marxist art theory and history; and in the history of documentary photography. Although some seminars and courses may be conducted in English, Dr. Esner is also fluent in Dutch.
